Ancestral Wand

Holly Arnuld , the famed 'wand wizard', only had one blood relative, yet she found out about this relative's existence entirely by accident.

Frustrated at final-year students stealing her wands, Holly determined to discover a failsafe. She would create a spell that would respect the Bond of Blood: a spell that could be applied to her favourite wands to ensure only she used them. If someone without her blood tried to hold her Ancestral Wand, for example, then they would feel a burning pain.

The magic worked, but not quite as intended. 'Perfection is the enemy', as she would say. Her Ancestral Wand was bound to Arnuld blood, but it had not chosen Holly as the one who should wield it. There was another Arnuld out there, in the wilds, and the Ancestral Wand stubbornly decided that it belonged to THEM.

Holly hated that the next step was borrowed from a child's fairy tale, but there was no other choice. She invited people to come up and try to hold the wand. If they could do so without feeling pain, then she would recognise them as a relative and bequeath half of her estate. Hundreds of townsfolk tried, until a young orphan held the wand with no after-effect. Holly took her under her wing. The Ancestral Wand had a new owner.

Holly Arnuld tinkered with the Bond of Blood spell over the years, creating a variant that would eventually be used in her memorial chamber: Arnuld's Sanctum.